Echo of Another World
by FyeHalfmoon
Summary: Marth's in a fix. Roy has to know what's wrong, but it seems this problem might just be a bit too deep for even him to work through. Might change the title, pairings and such, so I probably won't even say what the current pairing is. Anyway, the readers can help me decide as I go.


**I'm back with a new fic! (okay, I know it's not really all that exciting, but still) It's based off of another one I'm writing as well, although much more slowly and haven't yet posted any of it. But come to think of it, this one's going pretty darn slow anyway. Well, I wanted to get this one beta'd, but well... Let's say it didn't work out too well, so I'm just gonna go with the flow like I normally do. :)**

**Totally modern AU because I just felt like writing something like this for once. Why am I doing another chapterfic? Uhh.**

**Anyhow, I own none of this blah except the plort. (I know you saw that, Pervin)**

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The silence in the room seemed nearly unbearable to the redheaded boy sitting in the swivel chair at a semi-cluttered desk. True, there was plenty of homework to finish, and it really did need finishing, but this quiet was nerve-wracking! He released a loud breath of boredom and gave a sidelong glance in the other teen's direction.

Marth gave no reaction whatsoever. Just sat there, back against the bed, scratching his arm absently through the sleeve of his baggy jacket and staring away into his textbook as if searching for something long-lost. _Funny_, thought Roy, _he does that a lot nowadays, doesn't he? Looking like he's searching for something. Or someone._

It was true. For the past few months, the blunette could often be found watching life with eyes that sought out something familiar, something no one else knew about. It was almost as if he suddenly remembered a lost object or person -belatedly- and couldn't stop looking about for it (them?) very much like when a child loses her puppy, and even months later when it's hopeless, still glances about with a hopeless just-in-case kind of glance.

Come to think of it, didn't he appear a bit lost even now? The redhead took a second to have a better look at him. _Is it just me, or did he get thinner?_

Roy knew something was up when he studied his best friend more closely. His face did look skinnier with the cheekbones jutting out like that, there were shadows below his eyes, and his once-smooth lips were now riddled with angry-looking red marks.

Now that he was paying attention, he realized that his earlier assumptions must've been incorrect.

Marth wasn't wearing really baggy clothes. _He was too small for his old_ _clothes_. Hard as it was to believe, he was so thin his clothes didn't even fit right anymore.

Even the everpresent 'tiara,' a girly headband he always wore, looked a bit off. It was tilted to the side in a rather sadly misplaced manner over wispy blue locks of slightly messy hair. Wait. Messy hair? He frowned.

_How long ago was it a trademark Marth thing to have extremely neat hair? _Somehow the thought was alarming.

As he watched, Marth began to chew his bottom lip, attacking it as if it wasn't already awful-looking enough as it was.

"Hey," Roy nudged him, "are you sure you have any more good lip left to destroy?"

The other boy jerked and bit down too hard, startled. "What?" he questioned, swiping a sleeve at the sudden stream of blood which crept down to his chin. He registered the question. "No... I mean, I didn't notice. And you wouldn't have either, if you would have cared to study your homework instead of staring at me like a creep," he said with a glare.

Roy rolled his eyes and held out a tissue as a peace offering. "You do realize I wouldn't have been staring if you weren't giving your book the lost-puppy face?"

"Nonsense," muttered Marth, making good use of the tissue.

"I'm serious," the younger teen insisted, "you're weird a lot of the time the past while-"

"And you're weird all the time. Big difference."

"...like as if you lost something important, thank you for interrupting me," Roy finished in a somewhat miffed tone.

Marth gave a dismissive flutter of one hand. Roy stared mutinously.

"I'm-"

"_-fine, I'm fine_, yes of course you are," he mimicked the blunette in a whiny tone before grousing in his normal voice.

The older boy clamped his open mouth shut and glared mutely. The younger returned the look with equal fervor. They sat stubbornly like that for a minute.

Marth sighed. "Okay, what do you want me to do, give out a sob-story?"

Roy thought about this. That sounded terribly awkward, he had to admit. Maybe he didn't want that, but... But still. His best friend was not doing well, he felt bad for not noticing earlier, and Marth didn't seem to even want him to know. Which was miffing, just a bit.

_It sure is a sad day when your bestie can no longer tell you when he's down. And why._

"I want you to feel good. About yourself, about everything," he ended up answering vaguely.

"That's impossible," laughed Marth.

"Is not," hmphed Roy. He tried to organize his thoughts a bit better, meanwhile grabbing at a lock of blue hair and beginning a tiny braid.

The owner of the hair eyed him curiously.

"What are you doing?"

"Focusing. I always think better when my hands are busy." When one of his hands bumped against an ear tip, he smiled in a distracted way. His friend had the oddest ears, really, like they were mutated or something. Unlike Link, whose ears were long and slender, Marth's were like normal human ones, just with a short point where they should have been round. Kind of like fairytale elves, which Link refused to be associated with. 'HYLIAN, for goddess' sake,' he'd always insist.

_Speaking of Link... _The redhead frowned. Despite their differences, the Hylian and 'elf' got along very well. He wondered whether Link knew what was wrong. _He probably noticed waaay before I did and assumed I knew all about it_, he groaned inwardly.

Which was the worst problem about having quiet friends.

"I never know what's wrong with anyone, least of all with my best friends," he complained softly, still frowning. "Doesn't anybody trust me?"

Marth looked up from the book again. "I thought you said that _helps _you think," he said mildly. "Of course we trust you."

Frustration welled up inside the redhead. "Then why don't you ever tell me how you're feeling? I want to help!" He'd nearly reached the end of the braid now. It didn't help that his patience was shorter than the minuscule braid, or that until now he'd believed he knew everything there was to know about his friends. Okay, maybe that assumption wasn't all that smart. But he was pretty open with them, so couldn't they do as much too?

"Look, Roy," Marth pushed his hands away from the abused hair. "you want me to feel good?" He stared, face serious, at the other teen for confirmation.

Startled, Roy stared back. "U-um... Yes...?" He hadn't meant to put it as a question, but that intense look was unnerving.

"Really, you mean it?" The blunette leaned forward until their faces were a breath apart.

"Ah, um... Of course, duh," stammered the hairstylist, trying to get his nerve back, "jeez, Marth. You know perfectly well that I do."

"Okay, then go make dinner. I'll be hungry pretty soon." There was a grin and a hand ruffled Roy's ever messy rust-coloured locks.

Abruptly, he jerked away, dismissing his awkwardness as well as he could. "Fine," standing, he mentally shook himself and stalked off downstairs. It wasn't too hard to ignore the light burning of his cheeks.

And there was plenty to keep a mind occupied in a kitchen.

"That's just fine." He glared at a blameless ocean-blue wall. The clock ticking somewhere in the room continued to echo his monosyllables back at him agreeably, which only served to annoy him further.

Giving up, he sat down heavily on a polished wood chair and groaned. How could he have blanked out like that? That was just embarrassing.

Well, things happened. The easiest way to be cool with that was to pay it no mind. Nothing too tough. Roy berated himself for dwelling on it. Slapping his face to get his mind working again, he stood and looked around.

It was Marth's house, which generally meant about the same thing as the word _immaculate_. He knew his way around perfectly, more than he could say for his own room. His house didn't even belong in the same paragraph as Marth's. And seeing as it was neater and the adults were never home - Roy did wonder about that vaguely - it was the place they'd normally hang out, whether for school work, video games, or just plain doing nothing. Anything was fine with him if it was fine with his best friends.

Link used to hang out with them often, but recently he had gotten a job so he had that in addition to school, plus the homework which inevitably followed. Between all that, it was surprising he still had time to eat and sleep. Goddesses, they missed his input sometimes, even if he and Roy usually disagreed on just about any topic they could disagree on. It was always that way, since they'd met in kindergarten and disagreed on how to draw an 'o.' The Hylian even to this day insisted the only right way was to start from the bottom of the circle, while Roy stood firm on the belief that his teacher probably knew best when she taught him to begin at the top.

By junior high the two wouldn't even talk unless with many snide comments, much less look at each other without a glare burning between them. As others would say while shaking their heads over it, the boys shared a strong unadulterated loathing for each other. By then, Roy hadn't quite even been sure why exactly they were still repulsed at the sight of each other, but he still didn't want to let it go. Anyway, Link seemed to feel the precisely the same way.

Then in the second year of junior high Marth moved in and began to attend their school. He was an instant favourite with nearly everyone, student or teacher, with his winning ways and his earnest eager approach to any task he was faced with. Naturally, upon finding Roy struggling through pre-algebra, he offered to tutor him. The redhead hated the thought of tutoring -_I mean heck, you have to be stupid to get tutored,_ right?- but he welcomed the excuse to get to know Marth. He didn't normally like smart popular kids, but this was Marth, who seemed pretty cool. He was so right to trust his gut, because after the first study session they totally hit it off. They began hanging out outside of school and tutoring, Roy showing him around town since he was new to Smash City. It felt great to find someone he could actually relax around, since the blunette with his cheerfully flexible attitude could see his point of view no matter where he came from, and it was practically impossible to start an argument.

And naturally, he soon found out that Marth had become good friends with Link. Strangely enough, it felt almost like betrayal, but he managed to squash down his negativity. It wouldn't be very flattering for Marth to think that Roy considered him a belonging he couldn't share. He did try to convince the older kid that the Hylian was trouble, but when asked why... That tripped him up. Why was Link so horrible anyway? Still, he stubbornly refused to give him another chance until Marth threatened to stop tutoring and let him fail his next exam.

On the weekend after he relented, the three of them got together at a local ice cream bar (logically, Marth pointed out, since summer was just about there although school wasn't yet out) and the blunette left the other two to exchange polite glares while he made a quick visit to the restroom. Of course they both felt obliged to blurt excuses as to why they had come, and Link's had stirred up conversation. Accidentally, he'd let out that since his rabbit died recently, it was way too boring to stay home, and Roy perked up at the word 'rabbit.' As it turned out, coincidentally they both loved rabbits.

They were in the middle of an interesting tentative conversation when Marth returned, and only managed a few half-hearted glares once they'd remembered that they were supposed to be enemies. The rest of the afternoon drifted by pleasantly, between ice cream, the 'elf's' chatter, and strolling along in the sweltering heat while trading lame jokes, stories, and traditions.

Throughout the last weeks of school, Marth introduced the younger two boys to the idea that sometimes there isn't just one answer to each question. When faced with the dilemma of telling them which was the correct way to draw an 'o' he wasted no time in thought. From his point of view, there was no single correct way. After all, he himself started an 'o' from the left side.

That shut the other two up.

In time, Roy learned to respect the long-eared teen, who in turn learned to like the redhead for his upbeat, energetic personality. It didn't take an eternity for them to get along, but without Marth it was still near to impossible. Remove the older boy for twenty minutes, and the remaining twosome would be at each other's throats like so many angry puppies. Then again, give it five more minutes, and either one or the other would suddenly remember themselves and laugh. They soon had an answer to all of their arguments, one used if ever the blunette wasn't around to give the proper answer: "We're probably both right," which suited the fine roosters perfectly, smoothing down ruffled feathers effectively without putting down either one.

Somehow they all bonded so tightly together during the summer that followed, that in the next schoolyear they were inseparable. Every secret Roy ever had was always shared with his best friends, and he'd assumed that they did the same, especially Marth. But if he was keeping something which was most likely a big deal -_I mean, weight loss? It's gotta be BIG for Marth to do that!_- then it just might be that it was only him and Link being so open. No doubt about Link being honest, that guy _cried_ around them if he was seriously upset.

Roy frowned at the potato he was peeling. Why would Marth hide anything from them? Or just him? Did Link know what was going on? There were just way too many questions.

And even more incorrect answers.

Maybe it was like when Link's parents were going to divorce, and the Hylian boy had refused to say a word about it until they dragged the truth out of him together, word by painful word. That was in their first 'together' schoolyear. Roy still remembered vividly the long string of cursewords that came with Link's confession, how he managed to cuss out his parents, friends, and the world, all in between breathless sobs as tears dropped from his eyes onto his worn-out jeans.

"Hmmm..." Roy intoned through the spoon in his mouth. This wasn't a case of parent divorce, because Marth seemed really out of touch with his. They were never home - not that Roy could tell, that is. He'd never met, seen, or even heard about them, for goddess' sake. Left one to wonder what kind of parents they were. Then again, since the older boy never spoke of them, perhaps this _was _about them.

He'd simply have to ask, he decided, and he would as soon as he was done cooking.

But, in perfect accordance with the laws of plan-breaking, he didn't get the chance to ask. Of course. Once he'd placed the filled casserole dish into the oven he betook himself back to Marth's room, ready to demand an answer, when he noticed the blunette looked to be asleep (still sitting) with his head leaned back against his bed. Roy shut his mouth immediately. If Marth was stressed it might be better to let him sleep off some of his troubles.

Just as he settled down to continue his homework, however, he was proven wrong once more.

"Roy, what do you think about..." Marth's voice came out gently, hesitating as if his throat hurt or he was trying not to frighten away a shy creature. He eyes were still closed, although when Roy looked up he could see them roving about beneath the lids. A pause.

"What?" Roy stared from the swivel chair.

Marth's brilliant blue eyes opened and stared back at him, hard. Like he was calculating.

"What do you think about the _fae_?"

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**Yay, cliffie, because I felt like it.**

**Any opinions? What do you think Marth means?**

******Now, if anyone has ideas for this, bring it. I will probably dismiss most, but if I really like an idea I'll put it in and credit you.**

******Also people! *CLAPS LOUDLY TO GET ATTENTION* IkexMarth or MarthxRoy? Tell me in the reviews if you prefer a certain shipping. This could influence the ending of the story! So let me know what you prefer and maybe give a reason why you think I should choose your preferred shipping?**

**Thanks for reading, and I hope you are interested!**

**~Fye**


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